15 January 2011

Punch Buggy: An Update

And here we were thinking that Punch Buggy was something unique to our wider family or at best had been invented by their wider circle of friends.

That was until Mark spotted a young couple just outside daycare this week doing the 'Punch Buggy'. Which really got us to wondering........

So with any good thing that requires an answer these days, what did we do?

Wiki-ed it of course.

And it turns out that Punch Buggy is a GLOBAL (yep, you heard me, GLOBAL!) phenomenon. That has been around for years - like back to the 60's. It's even been portrayed in a SuperBowl commercial!

Like any tradition it has its variations. If you're in America, you're likely to yell out  'Slug Bug' or even the actual colour when playfully punching your fellow car occupant. Some people play it with any VW, but to be honest I think that's cheating a little.

Some people only play with the classic version of the Beetle:


but to be honest, out of all the Punch Buggies we've seen here in NZ, we can only recall seeing one or two of the old Herbie-style cars, so we have to make do playing with the new version. Which are still darn cute, and quite covetable. Just sayin!

I do like the idea of double points for the classic or convertible option though :-)


Noah is an eagle eye these days on ANY car-trip, and I distinctly remember one morning on the way to daycare Noah saying 'wouldn't it be cool if there was a Punch Buggy movie?' to which we laughed our heads off and replied 'actually Noah there is', proceeding to tell him all about Herbie. We managed to get hold of a copy of the 2005 remake Herbie: Fully Loaded which he has really enjoyed watching! Apart from the fact it stars Lindsay Lohan in her pre-bad girl days, it's actually rather watchable!



There's also an Aussie version of the Punch Buggy game which you play with Suzuki Swifts, yelling out 'Swift' instead. Funnily enough, when I mentioned our Punch Buggy game to one of the daycare teachers, she said she regularly plays the 'Swift' game. I think another version may also be the 'yellow car'?

On our recent travels which took us nearly 2,000km around the North Island, we counted 27 Punch Buggies. Ten to Noah (the winner), nine to Daddy and eight to me. Quite a close race in the end!

Here's the excited little face upon finding his winning number ten at the Festival of the Lights in New Plymouth.


It's certainly one way to keep a 4-year old entertained on car trips....now if we could just find something equally captivating for the 16 month old.....

5 comments :

Anonymous said...

Hehe we play mini slap. Your version may be a little less painful!

Jaz from Treacy Family said...

You guys must be classed as totally cool now.....almost famous even!!!
How funny :-)

Jodi said...

Ha - my boys play the "swift" one, as do all their friends. As I own one we had to make a rule that it didn't apply getting into and out of the car :) I was turning black and blue. Funny - I thought it was just a local thing as well.

Anonymous said...

I wondered where my kids had discovered "Yellow Car"...slap :-)

Ms K @ Mummybrain said...

LOL we play this game too, but I never knew it had a name, we called it Bug Love! LOL

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